Crazy Kids

So I have crazy kids. I love my crazy kids. There is never a dull moment in the Potter house. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Just the other day Cadence & Lorien were . . . let's say "dancing" (although that's not what was really happening). Cadence swung Lorien into the side of the piano & BOOM,

instant black eye.

After that happened there was lots of crying & hugging & "I'm sorry" being said. I love that they know when what they are doing is wrong & love each other no matter what. However, Lorien has a nice shiner to show off to the world. The best part? Lorien's teacher asked her if her mommy or daddy gave her the black eye. PERFECT. So the teacher thinks we would do something like that to our kids. Lovely. Luckily Lorien is our frank-matter-of-fact kid & told her teacher EXACTLY how it happened. Now poor Cadence is embarrassed because she knows it was her fault & so does everyone else.

Craiger, aka angel baby #5, has turned crazy child since he's become mobile. He's sweet as can be, but boy can he make some trouble. His FAVORITE things to do are empty the pantry & fridge. Bladen tends to leave the fridge open & Craiger goes right to work. I usually find milk, ketchup, mustard, etc. everywhere. Craiger's favorite things in the pantry are the napkins & the marshmallows. I wonder how he gets them sometimes, but he always manages to & makes a mess of it. But what a cutie pie right?

Craiger is also starting to climb. So we had to install a baby gate on the stairs. Now he climbs up onto the baby gate & shakes it as hard as he can to try to pull it down so he can go upstairs. What's a mommy to do?

Grocery shopping has been an adventure in & of itself lately. A few weeks back, Craiger pulled the bottom can out of a 6 foot display of pork & beans. The entire display, cans & all, crashed to the floor. I was MORTIFIED. I can't believe his arms are long enough to reach out of the cart now. That SAME TRIP we were standing in line to check out & Bladen & Taya both start screaming "SCARY PIRATE. SCARY PIRATE." at the top of their lungs. I turned around & there was a little old man with a cane standing there. He had an eyepatch over his eye. I about DIED. He laughed & told me he lost his eye in Vietnam. That made the whole thing even worse. The kids were still screaming "SCARY PIRATE" so he turned to them & said "Aaaargh" which scared the tar out of them & they cried. The man got a good laugh out of that.

And then just last week, Craiger managed to get his hands on a red pepper & launched into the face of the produce manager. Ugh. Then Bladen somehow triggered the silent alarm while I was putting the food on the conveyor belt. The cops were alerted & drove straight-away to the store thinking a robbery was taking place. The store manager tried to call them in route to tell them it was just a 2 year old that pushed it, but then the cops thought the managed was under duress & that the robber was telling him to tell the cops to go away. Needless to say, it was a HUGE mess & I was to blame for the whole misunderstanding. Good times, good times. Now I cringe every time I walk into a grocery store.

I'm amazed at how quickly my boys play off each other. They are both so young, but they both want to be like the other. Bladen LOVES climbing the ladder when it's out & I'm okay with it so long as I'm right there with him in case something happens, but I had no idea that watching Bladen do it would possess Craiger to want to do it too. I turned my back for one minute & when I turned back around Craiger was half way up the ladder too. BOYS.

But out of everything that's happened over the last couple of weeks, this one takes the cake for sure. We're trying to potty train Bladen right now & we try to REALLY congratulate him every time he goes in the toilet. I had Bladen on the toilet & then Craiger had a diaper blowout so I went to change him in the room next to the bathroom. While I was changing Craiger's diaper, Bladen walks in holding. . . . you guessed it. . . . POOP.

"Look Mommy. I did it. I got it out of my bottom."

I really know I shouldn't have taken pictures, but how could I not? It's TOO HILARIOUS. I was just proud of him for going potty like a big boy. (Not proud he dug it out of the toilet to show me, but proud he DIDN'T go in his underwear.) I guess I have awesome pics to show his future wife someday right? ;-)